


Play Catch

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: Kitty Norville - Carrie Vaughn
Genre: Gen, Kid Fic, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M, Yuletide, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:31:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fluffy domestic scene in Kitty's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play Catch

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenbookwench](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbookwench/gifts).



As the opening riffs to Bad Moon Rising repeated for the third time, I made a last desperate lunge across the counter and finally reached my phone. Still delicately balancing the hot pan full of spaghetti sauce in one hand, I flipped my cell open and brought it to my ear. "Hello?"

"Kitty, we're going to be a little late tonight," Ben's voice was punctuated with short bursts of static, but my werewolf-accentuated hearing could still understand him, and could still hear an increasingly familiar bustle in the background.

I had just enough discipline to let only one exasperated huff escape. "How late will you be, are you there as a lawyer or do I need to come bail both of you out, and does this mean that I should stop trying to make spaghetti?"

"I'm not in jail, thank you, but we'll be pretty late, seeing as how there're a couple of- wait, you're cooking?" Ben managed to cut off his laughter with a snort, but I could hear Cormac chuckling in the background.

"I'm trying to do something nice for you and you're mocking me? You two are in so much trouble once you get his bail squared away." It was an idle threat, and we all knew it, but Cormac had recently started to find my idle threats _amusing_ \- probably about the same time that our little ménage-a-trois had begun.

"Play catch?" a small voice asked from around the general vicinity of my knees.

"Not right now, honey," I replied absently, more concerned with the news that the only human member of my pack was once again arrested. "What on earth did he do that - never mind, I know _what_ he did. How did the police track him down?"

"Someone recalled seeing a stranger matching Cormac's description skulking around the area…"

I dimly heard the background laughter break off and a muttered, "I don't skulk!"

I couldn't help but giggle, but the amusement was quickly offset by the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. We'd made a trip out here to California, to a little backwoods area known as Blue Lake, because we'd gotten a tip that a pack of rogue werewolves were terrorizing the community.

In a town full of hobos and hippy college students doing all kinds of drugs, Cormac had been very skeptical of the stories, but my caller was insistent, and I pride myself on reading vocal tones. This girl was terrified, and she _believed_. Between Ben and me, we talked Cormac into at least investigating, and we, or Ben, at least, even managed to refrain from gloating when we immediately smelled a feral pack in the area within minutes of pulling off the highway.

"Play catch?" the small voice repeated, bringing me back to the present.

"Not now, sweetie," I repeated. "So how does one person _skulking_ around the general vicinity equal an arrest now?"

Ben sighed his tired sigh. "One of the members of the rogue pack running around town was apparently an officer's nephew…" he began.

"…And of course by the time they found the bodies they were human again, with no evidence of anything unusual." I finished knowingly, a small part of me hating how cavalierly I could speak like this. It wasn't very long ago that the idea of killing people had me shaking and loosing my lunch, but that was what happened when you spent all your time with Cormac and Ben. You acclimated. "And so local officer what's-his-name pins it on the first stranger he can find."

"Just about."

"And nothing about the ones they attacked?"

"All vagrants and hitchhikers," Ben's voice had a bit of an edge to it. "No one's looking very hard for any of them, but if they get something to stick on Cormac they may try to pin the rest on him."

" _Wonderful._ "

The "play catch?" was much more insistent this time, but before I could respond the stove began to beep loudly. "Shit! That's the pasta!" I heard another stifled chuckle from Ben but chose to ignore it as I tried to juggle the pasta pot and strainer without dropping the phone into the sink. The amusement I was feeling from Wolf wasn't helping either.

"So what are the odds?" I managed to ask.

"If you can find the hotel receipt that he signed the other night then I can prove that he wasn't in town during the last attack. If we can place anyone else near the scene, or get a similar skulking sighting in another area at the same time, then it probably won't even make it to a judge."

"Well that's not that bad, then." Considering that Cormac had spent a decent amount of time in jail more than once since I met him, this could end up being nothing but a funny conversation to have around dinner two days from now.

" _Play CATCH!_ " If my mind wasn't mentally filing through the receipts in the glove box while going in four other directions at once, I would have noticed the warning signs, but as it was they didn't penetrate my fuzzy brain until seconds before little teeth penetrated my leg.

"Ouch! Son-of-a-!" I barely managed to swallow the rest of the curse as I glared down at the small wolf latched on to my calf.

"Kitty?" Ben sounded as though he wasn't sure whether to be concerned or amused, and that annoyed me more.

It didn't help that Wolf was trying to shift, to properly discipline her cub. I managed to contain Wolf, not drop my phone again, put the strainer down in the sink without spilling all of the spaghetti out of it, and use my free hand to swat at Daisy - and honestly, who names their child that? I wasn't trying to actually hurt her, just convince her to let go of my leg on her own, without ripping a chunk out of it.

"Daisy, you have till the count of five to let go of me, or you will be in big trouble!" I warned. I had no idea if I was doing this parenting thing right - I only had my sister's example to take from, and she'd never had to deal with a five-year-old werewolf, though I knew mom would be thrilled when she found out. The renewed laughter I heard through the phone wasn't encouraging, but as my second to last finger folded down, Daisy abruptly let go of my leg, immediately assuming the position for getting attention and playing.

With a sigh, I wrapped up my conversation with Ben, confident that he'd take care of Cormac as he always had. "Call me if you need me to bring that receipt. I'll see you whenever you two get home; some sort of leftovers will be waiting."

"Alright. Have fun." Ben chuckled again and blew me a kiss before hanging up.

Free of the phone, and quickly tuning off the stove, I was finally able to devote all of my attention to considering the small miscreant before me. I had every intention of staying mad, of putting her on time out or letting Wolf come out and administer her own brand of discipline, but she just kept looking up at me coyly.

"Stop that." No change. This was the problem with cubs - if normal children could do sad puppy eyes half as well as wolf cubs could, we'd all be in trouble. There was also that added layer of guilt - guilt that we hadn't gotten to the camp site in time to save her mother from the rogue pack, guilt that we hadn't gotten there before she'd been bitten, guilt that I couldn't yet find the right words to explain what had happened to her, or why. I just couldn't say no, and even though I felt in no way prepared to be a mother - had given up on it, mostly - I knew that we had to take her in. Really, who else would be equipped to take care of a child that was half wolf, especially when she turned like this? So she was part of my odd little pack now, and when we got back to Colorado she'd become part of the larger pack there.

Drat, still with the puppy eyes. "Alright, fine, I'll play with you for a little while, but you have to change back first." Yes, I caved. You would have, too, with those eyes looking at you. Within seconds a gangly blonde toddler was standing before me, readjusting her sundress.

"Play catch?"

"Yes, Daisy, we can play catch."

"Heee!"


End file.
